Context

While I’m not a VR expert by any means, my first experience was around 1995. I have owned the Meta Quest 2, and currently own the Meta Quest Pro and the Apple Vision Pro. I’ve been an Apple stan since owning my first Apple computer, an Apple IIe.

I pre-ordered my Apple Vision Pro within a few minutes of Apple opening up orders online. I received my unit on day 1, and have used it almost every day since (except when traveling). My opinion of the device and the user experience is very complicated.

I like the idea of the device far more than the delivery. In most respects, it’s in another league from the Meta Quest line of headsets. But for the price, it really should be.

I decided to live dangerously and purchase the base 256GB model. Even with regular use, I never run out of storage.

Hardware Wishes

  • The front display (the one that shows everyone who’s looking at you a rendered version of your eyes) was a neat gimmick. But it must add a bit of heft to the price, and honestly I could live without it.

  • I don’t mind the cable to the battery pack. What I do mind is that the USB-C port is for power-only! As a “pro” device this really should have been a Thunderbolt 4 port. With iPad and iPhone Pro, you can plug into a vast array of accessories through the Thunderbolt port. For a $3,500+ “Pro” device, this seems a glaring omission. As someone who actually does some of their professional work inside of the Apple Vision Pro, I’d love to just be able to sit at my desk, plug into a Thunderbolt dock, and immediately gain from that hard-wired access to things like:

    • Power
    • Wired keyboard & mouse
    • 10Gbps hard-wired ethernet
    • Directly attached storage devices And really, if I am going to use this headset as a Mac virtual display, why wouldn’t I want to do that over Thunderbolt 4 instead of WiFi?

  • M4 (or M5+ whenever the next one comes out) with options for more GPU cores and more RAM to run more robust AI/ML workloads on-device.

  • Option for 5G data so I can use it at the park or other public places without having to bring a hotspot (assuming WiFi isn’t available)

Software Wishes

visionOS itself

I think Apple may have missed a huge opportunity by forking visionOS from iPadOS instead of from macOS. iPadOS already terribly nerfs the amazing hardware of the iPad product line. It’s nerfing the Apple Vision Pro even harder.

If we’re to believe this is a spatial computing device and not just another VR headset, it should really work more like a general purpose standalone computer.

But that ship has sailed. Let’s talk about things they can do to improve on what they’ve already brought to market:

  • All first-party apps from Apple should be available in visionOS if they are also standard on iPadOS. Moreover, they should be native visionOS apps. If you don’t already own one of these headsets, you might not be aware that Apple even now at version 2.3 of the OS still has very few native first-party apps, and several that they really phoned it in on by shipping “compatible” iPad apps. But others, like “Find My”, just aren’t available at all. Come on, Apple. If you’re not going to treat your own platform as a first class citizen, why should third party developers show interest?
  • Mac Virtual Display
    • Why can I only run one display? Why not three? Four? More?
    • Or get really clever and give every Mac app it’s own virtual desktop floating in space?
    • Why should I have to have my Mac on WiFi (come on… it’s got a 10Gbps option)? Why should it be unlocked? Think about this. Why shouldn’t I be able to virtual desktop into any Mac that’s on my iCloud account? Bonus points if you let me tap into it remotely. So my Mac Studio is at home, I’m at a coffee shop, but I’m using my Mac from the coffee shop over the public WiFi (or that 5G modem you’re going to let me optionally buy)
    • The superwide display is sexy. But it’s also incredibly impractical.
    • Since this is all virtual, why can’t I get fancy with portrait vs landscape orientation? Or arbitrary aspect ratios? Let me snap them to a grid or place them freely in my space.
    • All of my desires for better macOS integration are mostly because I can’t use my visionOS as a professional computer by itself. Just sayin’. I’d rather go 100% native.
  • Why can’t I pin apps to flat surfaces in my space?
  • Two words: spatial widgets. This is another big miss.
  • Why do most of my apps just end up being 2D windows in a 3D space? Why do they all have to be square shaped? You’re not bound by legacy conventions here. Think different.

First Party Apps (i.e. from Apple)

  • We got a lot of teases for Final Cut Pro X in visionOS and you’ve even had a major release of FCPX well after the release of visionOS 2.0. This is getting a little weird that we don’t have this yet.

Third Party Apps

  • The app store situation is bleak. Lots of low effort apps, some apps that aim to fix things that should be in visionOS but aren’t. Some apps to cover for your peers in the tech industry that are opting out of visionOS with extreme prejudice (like not even letting us run their existing iPad apps).
  • Apps that were pre-announced on stage at WWDC just never happened. Slack is a really glaring example of a partner that was happy to share the stage but never followed through.
  • The developer community is making a lot of noise about the changes they want/need to make developing for this platform more compelling, but it doesn’t seem like Apple’s interested in course correcting.